Big Wall Climber Joe Fitschen At Country Bookshelf This Thursday!

The Country Bookshelf will host pioneer climber Joe Fitschen Thursday March 7, 2013, at 7:00 pm, for a special reading and signing of his new book Going Up: Tales Told on the Road to El Capitan. Fitschen, with three companions, made the first continuous ascent of El Capitan in Yosemite Valley.

This event is free and open to the public.

El Capitan

The core of 'Going Up' is a collection of stories about those California rock climbers in the 1950s who took to the big walls of Yosemite Valley.

A very small group, fewer than twenty young men, pioneered climbs at Tahquitz Rock, the southwest desert, the Tetons and Canada.

The stories feature such legends as Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard, Irene Beardsley (part of the first all-woman team to climb the North Face of the Grand Teton, and of the first American ascent in 1978 of Annapurna), Steve Roper, climbing equipment pioneer Tom Frost, and Harry Daley among many others.